ECB COCKTAIL PARTY — INTEREST RATES LOWER, STIMULUS HIGHER TODAY: That’s the high-octane recipe for economic recovery that most market-watchers expect today, a combination notable because interest rates are already below zero. The European Central Bank is expected also revise down inflation forecasts. Until now the ECB has injected close to €500 billion into the European economy, smaller than the U.S. program that has been running for longer, but thought to be crucial to Europe’s slow yet ongoing economic recovery. The announcement comes alongside speculation that the U.S. Federal Reserve will increase rates this month for the first time in years. The Guardian | Reuters

VOTING TODAY — DANES ON WHETHER TO OPT INTO 22 EU JUSTICE LAWS: As usual the debate has swirled around much more than the actual issue at hand. “It is infused with emotion,” said Frederik Hjorth, a researcher at the University of Copenhagen. “But the dominant emotion is mistrust and anger at politicians,” he told the Financial Times. http://on.ft.com/1QfOHya

EUROPE’S INTELLIGENCE ‘BLACK HOLE’: The Paris attacks have spurred calls for a European FBI, but many remain reluctant to share intelligence. Maïa de la Baume and Giulia Paravicini report: http://politi.co/1O5qwOv

COMMISSION TO LAUNCH MCDONALD’S TAX PROBE — THEY’RE NOT LOVIN’ IT: Commissioner Margrethe Vestager is expected to supersize her tax investigation today, opening a probe into McDonald’s, the restaurant chain that has a special tax deal in Luxembourg (which trade unions claim has allowed the company to avoid around €1 billion taxes between 2009 and 2013, and underpay another €200 million). McDonald’s is also one of the biggest employers of young Europeans at a time of desperate levels of youth unemployment, making the case another political hot potato: POLITICO | Wall Street Journal

PARLIAMENT — NEXT MOVES ON TAX AGREED: Party leaders in the European Parliament unanimously agreed to continue the special committee on tax rulings that made its first report last week. Among other tasks the committee will look into the work of the European Commission in the areas of state aid and taxation, examine national compliance with tax legislation, as well as look into companies’ aggressive tax planning.

PARLIAMENT — VOLKSWAGEN #DIESELGATE INVESTIGATION PLAN TO BE SET DECEMBER 17: Anca Gurzu and Quentin Ariès have seen a draft text planning an investigation into “alleged failure of the Commission and the member states authorities to take proper and effective action to enforce the explicit ban on defeat devices.” All political group heads were supposed to vote on the matter Wednesday, but postponed the vote after the European People’s Party sought a change in the investigating mandate. Social Democrats, Liberals, Greens and leftists want a major investigation. The Parliament’s biggest group, the center-right EPP, and the conservatives are less keen. http://politi.co/1NIkid6

SCOOP — PASSENGER NAME RECORDS PROPOSAL ON BRINK OF SUCCESS: There’s just one point of disagreement left, according to negotiators who spoke with POLITICO: over how long the collected passenger data be stored. National permanent representatives to the EU say they can can accept a six-month maximum storage period. Ministers may sign off today.

OUT TODAY — POLITICO 28 SPECIAL MAGAZINE: 68-page glossy on the people shaking up European politics is on sale at select Brussels newsstands. Sneak-peak at the cover: http://politi.co/1jyZWow

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SLOVAKIA FILES LAWSUIT AGAINST EU OVER REFUGEE QUOTA PLAN: Slovakia’s Prime Minister Robert Fico says the plan (which requires it to take in 802 migrants) is not only “nonsense” but “technically impossible.” The European Commission says Slovakia must comply with the law while the court deliberates. Diplomats of different EU countries told POLITICO they don’t expect the court to rule in Slovakia’s favor, but rather see it as a tactic to put pressure on the European Commission. Senior Commission sources that spoke to Playbook concur. Says one: “Suing the EU is a ritual for many countries. A much bigger concern for the cabinets of the presidents [Tusk and Juncker] was Fico saying he would not abide by the decision.”

“The legal argumentation is not particularly strong, this is a reelection ploy … I don’t know anyone in Slovakian policy that takes it [the lawsuit] seriously. [But] your average Slovak is not following the details, they see only Fico being strong in the face of the EU,” says my source. More reporting here: http://politi.co/1SxMKMA

TAKING TUSK TO TASK: Konrad Szymański, the Polish Europe minister, told Poland’s TVN television the government hasn’t decided whether to support Donald Tusk for a second term as European Council president. Szymański said, “We’ll be acting just like every other member country.” He later told POLITICO: “We’ll make an assessment at the end of the term … objectively with no bias.” You would never have caught Belgium saying that about Herman van Rompuy.

UK VOTES TO BOMB ISIL IN SYRIA: U.K. parliamentarians staged a marathon 10-hour debate yesterday over what the country’s response should be to terror in and exported from Syria. MPs voted 397 to 223 to carry out airstrikes, with a third of Labour’s MPs defying their leader Jeremy Corbyn to back the strikes. Many expressed admiration at the depth and length of discussions that dominated airwaves, online chatter and water cooler conversations yesterday. BBC: http://bbc.in/1MXaZCp

Robert Colvile has this delightful sketch of the debate, including the moment Jeremy Corbyn hit the dispatch box: “Jeremy Corbyn didn’t seem like a terrorist sympathizer. More like a substitute teacher put in charge of an unruly classroom, which gradually but inexorably slips out of his control.” http://politi.co/1RnZXJA

Chair of defense committee says government speaks of ‘bogus battalions’: Julian Lewis says there are not enough organized anti-Assad troops to rely on. “Instead of having dodgy dossiers, we now have bogus battalions of ‘moderate’ fighters.” Veteran British journalist Robert Fisk, with four decades on the ground in the Middle East, told an audience of 1,500 in Antwerp last night that it would be optimistic to think there are 700 armed and moderate Syrian rebels left, dismissing the idea of tens of thousands.

CLICK HERE — LEAVE.EU CAMPAIGN JUMPS THE SHARK WITH SYRIA VIDEO: “We come in peace. You leave in pieces” is just one of the many jaw-dropping lines in this video, which dubs the voices of Syrians to say things such as “I’ve always wanted to live in open plan” as they survey a bomb-site. All the carnage is blamed on the EU, though it has no armed forces. http://huff.to/1Qeswbx

HUNGARY — ORBÁN SAYS EU HAS SECRET REFUGEE PLAN IT’S ABOUT TO DUMP: Orbán’s view is dismissed by European Commission Vice President Frans Timmermans, who says this, and the idea that Greece may be thrown out of the Schengen zone, is “nonsense.” VIDEO: http://bit.ly/1OH4C6Q

BELGIUM’S MR. RIGHT — BART DE WEVER IS CHANGING IN THE AGE OF TERROR: Laurens Cerulus examines the most controversial figure in Belgian politics, the head of its biggest party, mayor of Antwerp and the man who wants to split the country that many say doesn’t work in its current form. http://politi.co/1Oz0gkb

BELGIUM — BELGIAN KING IN HOT WATER OVER BRUSSELS LOCKDOWN PERFORMANCE: Cynthia Kroet on how King Philip and Queen Mathilde hung out at a French spa throughout the first weekend of the Brussels lockdown (both of their palaces are in Brussels). The Belgian prime minister said: “We could not force him to come back,” when asked why the King did not return to show solidarity with his citizens. On Tuesday, the king and queen met the families of the Belgian victims of the Paris attacks. http://politi.co/1Ip7RR2

NATO — JOHN KERRY’S VISIT AND VIEWS VERBATIM: On Russia,“If Moscow wants to be relieved from sanctions, it is there for the getting, you have to simply live up to the promises that have been made.” On ISIL: “I have called on every NATO ally to step up its support to fight Daesh. Every alliance member expressed clear support.” On Cameron: “We applaud his leadership.”

BRAZIL — IMPEACHMENT PROCEEDINGS AGAINST PRESIDENT BEGIN: Speaker of the lower house of Parliament puts Dilma Rousseff in some very hot water. France 24: http://f24.my/1XIhpIp

DATA PROTECTION FORWARD LOOK — PRIVACY AUDITS IF NO SAFE HARBOR DEAL BY FEBRUARY 1: U.S. and EU negotiators are trying to craft a new safe harbor deal to replace the one struck down by the European Court of Justice on October 6, and they’re working against a January 31, 2016 deadline. If there’s no deal, POLITICO’s Joseph Schatz reports, companies need to expect something akin to a tax audit for companies that were previously covered by the safe harbor agreement. “The authorities will pick off companies one by one and effectively start doing audits,” says Ann LaFrance, of Squire Patton Boggs.

KIDS ARE APPEARING EVERYWHERE: following a children’s climate conference in Sweden, where the kids ate dinner with the King of Sweden, a group of them will present a communiqué to the U.N. envoy of youth in connection to the opening of the Young & Future generations day at 10 am, in Halle 4, at the Climate Change studio. Eurochild, which campaigns for rights and protection of children, is among those participating. http://bit.ly/1QfEjq4

THE MARSHALL ISLANDS ARE DISAPPEARING: Special report in the New York Times on the country that could evacuate to the United States under a special 1986 agreement, a prospect most of the residents reject. http://nyti.ms/1Ipar9x

BIG GRASSROOTS AND THEIR CLIMATE GAMES CAMPAIGN: The Climate Games promised to be all pervasive at COP, until terror and France’s state of emergency struck. Actions have shifted mostly elsewhere, but are still capable of raising a smile or causing hair to be torn out. Today’s example: Activists overran a Volkswagen dealership to announce “We are Nature” and bombard it with …. leaves. VIDEO (action starts at the 45 second mark): https://vimeo.com/147410136

DIVESTMENT CAMPAIGNS GET A SECOND LOOK: They’re not a relic of apartheid-era social campaigns, or limited to issues like Israeli settlement products, it seems. State Street Global Advisors has developed the first publicly traded index fund that invests only in S&P 500 companies that don’t own reserves of coal, gas, or oil. http://bit.ly/1QfHs9o

AS FINANCE SPAT FESTERS AT THE COP NEGOTIATING TABLE: Overshadowed yesterday by the dramatic plight of sinking islands and their new “island boy” BFF Barack Obama,the broader G77 (actually more than 100 countries) plus China hit back overnight with a very long statement telling developed countries to pay-up more from 2020, and to stop counting private investments towards their national commitments. Hardly the compromise the summit needs to move forward.

GERMAN ENERGY COMPANIES SHOOT THEMSELVES IN THE FOOT: Matthew Karnitschnig on how big utilities threw away the golden opportunities presented to them by Germany’s Energiewende policy revolution. Instead of global green domination they created their own crisis and wiped out 80 percent of their value. http://politi.co/1IFotyR

APPOINTED: Ilkka Tapani Salmi to the position of Director “Security” in the European Commission’s Human Resources and Security department. Salmi has worked in the Finnish Security Intelligence Service since 2002.

CAPITAL MARKETS UNION SUMMIT — Can the CMU kick-start investment in Europe? Does it mean the roll back of post-crisis legislation? Is securitization back in? Join us in Paris on February 2, for a day of discussion co-hosted with L’AGEFI and presented by J.P. Morgan. Insights from Olivier Guersent, Director General, DG FISMA; Xavier Rolet, CEO, London Stock Exchange Group and Sachin Patel, Global Co-Head, Capital Markets, Funding Circle. Discover the full line-up and register here: politi.co/1OVgN2G

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